Alaric disembarks along with four cloaked Level Five soldiers, following Priest Vogel’s purposeful stride. Dread rising, he takes in the dark lightning flashing in bizarre loops. He lowers his gaze to the shadows rising around them in otherworldly helices of smoke, the unnerving sense mounting that the smoke is sentient.

Vogel pauses, and Alaric and the soldiers pause, as well.

A forest stands before them, but it’s all wrong. The trees are made of gray mist, their branches twisting like skeletal fingers.

Nothing green. Nothing living.

“‘Lo, the wilds shall be corrupted and cast Shadows across the land,’” Vogel intones. He sets his silvered gaze on the Mages. “Take heart, brethren. The Ancient One walks with us.”

Alaric’s fist tightens around his wand, his courage bolstered, as they all make the five-pointed Blessing Star sign on their chests. Together, they step into the Shadow forest, the landscape unnervingly quiet, as if holding its breath.

After a time, a clearing opens up. Alaric’s gaze finds its center and he startles, a lash of terror flicking through him. A pewter-hued hillock rises from its misty ground, a dark, arching entrance marking its base.

And a Death Fae demon stands before it.

The pale demon is preternaturally still and stretched to an unnatural height, its eyes solid black, no whites, its ears sharply pointed. Obsidian horns curl up from its head and countless arms ray out from its body to encircle the hillock.

Its bottomless eyes narrow as the Mages approach.

Alaric’s legs threaten to give out as he reaches into his pocket and grips his compact version of The Book of the Ancients, murmuring prayers as they draw near Evil itself.

Vogel stops only a few handspans away and the creature straightens. What looks like vast relief spreads across the demon’s face. Its horns retract into its spiked black hair, and the soulless, solid black of its eyes contracts, the whites becoming visible. The countless arms pull in, and the demon’s height swiftly reduces to that of a young man standing before them.

“Dryads,” the demon says, his subterranean voice resonating through Alaric with a disturbing thrum. “I sense your elemental affinity lines. Blessed be the Power of III.” His gaze sweeps over their wands. “I hoped and prayed that Friends of the Balance would come for the Shadow Tool. Are there more? Do you come with a Dryad army to take hold of the Shadow Branch?”

We’re Mages, not filthy Fae, Alaric expects Vogel to mercilessly correct the beast as he slays him, but Vogel remains serene.

“We come with an army,” Vogel simply states and surprise darts through Alaric.

“Then come, Dryadin.” The demon beckons them forward with a wave of his black-taloned hand. “The Tool is straining to rise and is luring the seers of all the lands.” He pauses, a haunted look tensing his eyes. “It wants to do to your continent what it did to ours.”